Former Homestore CEO Stuart Wolff to Face Criminal Charges

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Former Homestore Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Stuart Wolff and another senior ex-Homestore executive were indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday on multiple charges of insider trading, falsifying books and violating securities laws.


The indictments of Wolff, who headed the Westlake Village-based provider of online real estate information from 1997 until resigning in January 2002, and Peter Tafeen, the company’s former executive vice president of business development, culminate one of the largest criminal investigations of a Los Angeles corporation.


Each executive faces 19 criminal counts with a possible maximum sentence of 185 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.


“The investigation, which has now reached the company’s CEO, went up the ladder to expose coordinated corruption across a broad spectrum,” said U.S. Attorney Debra Yang, in a statement. “We have now criminally charged 11 defendants in this case, bringing to justice all of the parties involved in the scheme to defraud Homestore shareholders.”


All of the other nine defendants pleaded guilty to criminal charges or agreed to cooperate with the government.


Prosecutors allege that Tafeen orchestrated the fraud scheme to create “round-trip” transactions, which inflated the company’s revenues but were concealed from auditors. Wolff misled investors and analysts about the company’s financial condition when he blamed losses on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Both executives exercised millions of dollars in stock options as part of the fraud, the government alleges.


The criminal case was investigated by the FBI. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil lawsuit against Wolff and Tafeen for violations of reporting, record-keeping and internal controls regulations and for lying to auditors.

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